Hello Lovelies,
Anyone else out there still working on their new year’s resolutions? I haven’t reported since the first week of the new year!
I have been really great about working on mine, but not always so great about tracking/ reporting. As a matter of fact, it’s been so bad that I realized that I never even told you all my goals for the blog! Woops. The only thing I mentioned was my reading goal of at least 50 books for the year. That one’s not going as well as I’d like. I’m only up to 7 so far… Here are the other goals I listed and forgot to tell you about, and how they’re going.
1. Read every day
This one has been going pretty well. I may have skipped a few weeks around launches, but other than that, I have been pretty good about it. I have it set up for at least 1 chapter at bedtime. However, given how far behind I am with my reading goals, I am upping my reading frequency. I am now reading at least 3 chapters a day, reading during breakfast and lunch, and at bedtime. Hopefully this will help me get caught up on my reading goals.
2. Increase blog community
I started the newsletter middle of the year last year, but didn’t really know how to increase our community. That was a big goal this year. It’s going pretty well. The newsletter membership has almost quadrupled this year (From about 280 to 896) and engagement has increased as well. (currently at a 26.9% open rate, and a 4.3% CTR) I’ve seen the number of visitors on the web analytics increase as well. Last year, the average view per post was in the teens, now we are in a happy several hundred! I would like to see that keep growing. Do you know anyone who you think would love our group? Invite them to join us! That would be great!
3. Figure out how to monetize the blog
For the first five years on the blog, I monetized by using Amazon associates on the book links. Unfortunately, in five years I have not made enough money in click through purchases to pay for a cup of coffee each month (let alone buy more books)! Sure, I’m not sharing all the bookish goodness with the goal of getting rich, but this blog takes up the equivalent of a part-time job. I need to do what I can to pay for more books! I am sure most of you have seen that I’ve added a Tip Jar to the blog, allowing people to leave a tip when they are grateful for the content I provide. This tip can be as much or as little as they like and can be a one-time payment or done monthly. I’ve also begun a Patreon account for monthly subscribers and combining all the bookish content I create from Instagram posts to booktubing, and posts from the blog and guest posts I do on other blogs. I’ve created several different levels for the convenience of my fans. Anything from $1 a month to $15 a month, based on your budget. The part I am most excited about with the Patreon account is that it will allow me to share the bookish wealth, by providing books to my patrons. Once I hit 100 members, I will do monthly e-book giveaways, at 500 patrons I will add paperbacks to the e-book giveaways, and when I get to 1,000 I will start doing monthly bookcrates! I will also keep doing the Amazon Associates, and have been adding ads to my booktubing account as well. These have all been set up in the last couple of months, and hopefully it will take off soon.
4. Add more books to my TBR
This has really blown up. I started the year with 50 books on my TBR. Now I have 186 on Goodreads, and more than twice that many on my Amazon wish list. (That’s the best place to make sure that they end up purchased for me for holiday gifts.) I look forward to this list continuing to grow!!
So there’s my check-in for my New Year’s Resolutions for An Angell’s Life. How are your resolutions going? Can I help? Let us know in the comments below!
Until next time,
Keep Reading!